I’m not surprised that Jason Knauf’s 60 Minutes Australia interview is getting so much attention. In fact, I thought it was weird that the teaser for the interview got so little attention when it dropped on Friday. This was Knauf’s first on-camera interview ever (I think?) and he spoke on the record about Prince William, Kate, Prince Harry and Meghan. Knauf is technically not working for the monarchy or heir at this point, although he’s still involved (in some way) with Earthshot. Plus, it definitely seems like he’s an informal advisor to William and that they’re still quite close. Close enough for people to point out Knauf’s very obvious timing. Even the Daily Beast’s Royalist pointed out that Knauf’s interview makes it look like Prince William is obsessively following everything the Duchess of Sussex does.
Damaging allegations that Meghan Markle was a workplace bully have been revived by an unprecedented TV interview by key Prince William loyalist Jason Knauf, just a week before Meghan’s new show is due to drop on Netflix. The intervention risks being seen as a calculated attempt by a royal family loyalist to damage Meghan’s reinvention as a warm-hearted, jam-making, bee-keeping homemaker.
It will confound Pollyannas who have expressed the hope that William wishes his sister-in-law success in her new career, and serve instead to reinforce the perception that the Sussexes and the Windsors are locked in an intractable feud. Knauf is a former key palace aide, who first worked for Kate, William and Harry, and then for Meghan and Harry, as communications secretary. However, he subsequently turned into one of Meghan’s most powerful and implacable enemies.
He betrayed Meghan and accused her of bullying and turned on her in a court case she brought (and won) against the Daily Mail. Meghan denied the bullying allegations.He is openly aligned with the Waleses, having remained a close friend of Prince William. He is a trustee of William’s Earthshot Foundation and was knighted in 2023. He has now given an extraordinary interview to 60 Minutes Australia in which he suggested he stood by the allegations he made against Meghan.
The timing of the interview just a week before her new show, With Love, Meghan, drops recalls, for some, the timing of the publication of Knauf’s last intervention on the matter of Meghan’s management style. In 2021, just days before Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey was due to screen, an email sent by Knauf in 2018, accusing Meghan of having bullied two personal assistants out of their jobs, was published by the London Times. The leak was widely seen as a pre-emptive strike aimed at tarnishing Meghan’s credibility ahead of the Oprah interview.
Asked about that time in the sit-down with 60 Minutes Australia, Knauf, a New Zealander by birth, said he had “no regrets” and added: “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
While he sought to ostensibly couch his response as a generalized one, Knauf, a seasoned PR and reputation management expert, is unlikely not to have considered that his remarks would be construed as doubling down on his 2018 assessment that Meghan was a manipulative bully.
It is also inconceivable that he wouldn’t have sought William’s permission to give the interview, given that he remains a close friend of William, as the documentary makes clear. They are so close that, as Knauf says, William called him privately to tell him about Kate’s cancer diagnosis.
While the 60 Minutes Australia segment featured information about Knauf’s letter to Simon Case – the letter in which Knauf accused Meghan of bullying two personal assistants out of the job – they used a voiceover to recite the letter and Knauf was not asked about the letter directly, nor was he asked anything about “the bullying accusations” specifically. He was asked how the whole thing made him feel, basically. Anyway, I think it’s interesting that the Royalist’s peggy sources have seemingly dried up and now Tom Sykes is saying this sh-t outright, that Knauf’s interview was specifically timed to f–k with Meghan’s Netflix show, and that this was yet another Kensington Palace operation. Maybe some of the Royalist’s “sources” can tell William that it’s pathetic to still be so obsessed with his sister-in-law.
Photos courtesy of Instar, Backgrid, Cover Images, Avalon Red, 60 Minutes Australia.
